


In A Sentimental Mood

by submergedmemory



Series: Love Is Like Music [5]
Category: Dungeons and Daddies (Podcast)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Glenn Close (Dungeons and Daddies), Asian Character(s), Asian-American Character, Demisexual Glenn Close (Dungeons and Daddies), Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Drabble Collection, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Gen, Morgan is a witch maybe idk, One Shot Collection, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-Canon, Pregnancy, The Velveteen Rabbit, Time is an elastic band, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:09:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24975115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/submergedmemory/pseuds/submergedmemory
Summary: On the wings of every kissDrifts a melody so strange and sweetIn this sentimental blissYou make my paradise complete---A musicverse ficlet collection.
Relationships: Glenn Close/Morgan Freeman (Dungeons and Daddies)
Series: Love Is Like Music [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1708477
Comments: 19
Kudos: 33





	1. In a Sentimental Mood

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote a whole bunch of DvD commentaries on my other fic hoping that it would help with my writer's block on my One Big Fic but instead I just ended up writing this new thing.

_ "What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?" _

_ "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real..." _

Glenn stops, pausing in his narration. He shifts a bit, slowly, carefully on the loveseat, and the couch springs squeak quietly in protest, while Ellington and Coltrane play piano and tenor saxophone respectively on the record player. He slowly, carefully turns the page on the well-worn picture book, and the page comes away from the spine.

Glenn frowns. He pushes the bridge of his glasses up his nose. His hand comes away damp, and his scowl fades away into recollection, at the unseasonably hot autumn weather and the malfunctioning central air system. Morgan, laid low by the unusual humidity and her pregnancy, a straw fan in her hands and invectives on her tongue, and Glenn himself dialing the repairman’s number while he rubs an ice cube on the back of her neck. The both of them collapsing on the sofa, surrounded by half a dozen desk fans, Morgan’s grey-haired head on Glenn’s lap as she lies on her side, a hand protective on her stomach, round with their child.

Glenn smiles, brushes a troublesome strand of hair out of Morgan’s face and gently tucks it behind her ear. Her brow furrows, ever-so-slightly, but she doesn’t wake. Glenn shifts on the loveseat again, and the couch springs squeak, again, quietly in protest, while Ellington and Coltrane continue to play piano and tenor saxophone respectively on the record player. He holds the loose page of the well-worn picture book in place, and continues his narration.

_ "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand..."  _


	2. A Memory That Continues to Dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sleepless nights and early morning declarations.  
> 

Morgan has moods, sometimes, where she hides herself away, but she beckons Glenn over when she sees him.

“You’re up early,” she says as Glenn approaches. It’s chilly, the sun still sleeping beyond the horizon.

“So are you,” Glenn says, settling in next to her. “You feeling okay?”

“Yes.” She pauses. “Been dreaming.”

“Yeah? About?”

Morgan smiles, very faintly, and lays her hands over her belly.

“Oh?”

She nods, leans her head on Glenn’s shoulder. “He’s beautiful.”

“‘He,’ huh?” Glenn slings an arm around her shoulders, and Morgan wraps an arm around his waist in turn. “Not a girl?”

Glenn thinks he would very much love a little girl. But a boy sounds nice, too, with Morgan’s sharp wit and good sense and kind heart.

Morgan hums, contemplative, pulls Glenn closer. “It will be a boy,” she says, finally. “And his name will be Nick.”

“Damn, kid’s got a name already, too,” Glenn laughs, pressing a kiss to Morgan’s brow. “Only one way to find out, huh?”

\---

Morgan had been right, of course -- all the way down to the name that Nick had chosen for himself. Glenn had smiled, honest and true, even through the bittersweet ache of his memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been having trouble with my bigger WIPs, but I've been having ideas for smaller things that don't have enough material to stand on its own. Anything new that's less than 1000 words will go here, probably.


	3. I’ve got my mind made up and I can’t let go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Glenn hyperfixates on something.

  
—

Glenn’s not what people call particularly smart. The elevator doesn’t quite reach the top floor in the building that is Glenn’s mind, and he’s been told multiple times —by teachers, acquaintances, his own mom and dad — right to his face, even — that he should hope his “pretty face” lasts well into adulthood because he’ll be in a whole fuckload of trouble if it doesn’t.

To this, Glenn will just shrug and smile and say something that should be infuriating but comes out impossibly charming, and if he was the type of person who cared about book smarts or academic prowess, he’d point out that being classically trained in guitar wasn’t something that came from smoking weed and shoveling goldfish crackers in his face every single day.

But he doesn’t, and really, what had formal schooling ever done for him? Not much, just elicited a lot of pursed lips and disapproving looks and “ _I expect more from you, Glenn,_ ” from Henrietta, and maybe in another universe — or maybe if there were more hours in a day, or maybe if he was just interested in any of that, period — he’d know the exact science of why a guitar string vibrating at 400 hertz will make the air in the room vibrate at that same frequency and _fuck off with all of that_ , because he doesn’t need to know the physics of sound to know that positioning his fingers this way or that will produce a note that sounds like so-and-so or a chord that sounds like such-and-such.

And honestly, it’s not as if the building is completely vacant. He knows things. He’s good with his hands, good enough to take apart things and put them back together (eventually), and to get a guitar singing just right, and speaking of singing, he’s not half bad at that, either. He can speak enough Japanese to have a conversation about the weather, and he can read enough Spanish to point out directions. He knows just enough Cantonese to tell Bill, trying to “impress” some poor woman he’s trying to fuck with his “ _awesome Chinese, you know I lived abroad in China for a few years back in the day,_ ” that his accent sounds like garbage (the woman laughs when she hears that, and his father, understanding not the words but definitely the intention, also laughs, a little too loud, and claps a hand on Glenn’s back, a lot too hard), and his Vietnamese is, well, “ _there’s a saying that goes something like, ‘the pot calling the kettle black lives in a glass house,’”_ but it gets better, day by day, and that’s what really counts, right?

All this to say, Glenn’s never been a fount of knowledge, has never professed to being one, but when Glenn Close wants to know something, by God, Glenn Close will fucking _know_ something, whether it’s every single wombat fact his ten year old self can dig up from every single book in the library, or, in this particular instance, having Morgan’s laptop burning a hole in the comforter in the small hours of the morning as he opens yet another window to add to the thirty separate windows already open.

Glenn Close is getting fucking married, so that means Glenn Close is going to know everything there is to know about weddings. Literally _everything._

“Holy shit, did you know groomsmen used to be called bride-knights because they’d need to defend the bride from kidnappers? Shit’s wild, babe.”

Morgan is something of a night owl herself, or she used to be, but that had been more by necessity than by choice, and as soon as she had quit her bartending gig, her time spent burning the midnight oil had dropped significantly. Still, she had stayed awake much longer than Glenn had expected, periodically glancing at his open windows with amused interest while she took notes on something for her dance company that made Glenn’s eyes cross and his head hurt when he tried to make sense of it. But now she tosses and turns next to him, or as much as she can in their shared twin bed, pulling her hand out from under her pillow and groping around blindly in the dark until it finds the monitor and promptly shuts it closed with a snap. “ _Sleep,_ magpie. _Now._ ”

  
Morgan had gone to bed at around two-thirty. It’s three-forty seven now. There’s no point in sleeping if Morgan is just going to (accidentally) wake him up when she gets out of bed at five to get ready to go to work at six.

Glenn takes her hand and squeezes it reassuringly. “Okay,” he says. Morgan grunts, reaches up to clumsily pet his hair and accidentally knocks his glasses askew instead before shoving it back under her pillow, her breathing eventually evening out into slumber again.

Glenn opens the laptop again and pulls up a new window and types “vietnamese wedding dress” into the search bar.  
  
—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Henrietta is Glenn’s mom. Also time is an elastic band.


	4. give myself some time to think

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Ride me until you break me."

Glenn's hands go still on her, and Morgan pauses, looks down at Glenn sprawled beneath her, a deep, dark blush creeping up his face and down his chest, lips kissed red and bruised, breath coming in short, shallow puffs. "Are you… _okay_ , Glenn?"

"Yeah, babe, of course," Glenn says, eyes dark and heavy-lidded, his voice practically a purr. "I want you to ride me until you break me." His hands grip her thighs tight, tight enough to leave marks.

Morgan doesn't say anything, just stares down at Glenn for a minute before climbing off of him, rearranging herself and Glenn until they're smooshed face to face and tangled together on her twin-sized bed. "Changed my mind," she says before Glenn can say anything. "I've got to be at work by seven. I need all the sleep I can get." Morgan throws the comforter over the both of them and lays a hand on Glenn's arm, gently. "Maybe next time, okay?"

"...of course," Glenn says. The tension in his body relaxes. "Next time."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> psa! you! can! say! no! at! any! point! for! any! reason!


	5. a helping hand to make it right

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morgan’s leg hurts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “musicverse three inches to the left, or: hey what if i just retconned all those fics i wrote with morgan dead and let her live wouldn’t that be something,” not to be confused with “musicverse three inches to the right, or: glenn’s fucking dead, good luck not being a tiger parent morgan you’ll fucking need it”

—

  
It’s late. Morgan’s leg hurts.  
  


The two of them - Close and herself - have been walking for at least twenty blocks. The hotel is at least another thirty blocks away - only another mile and a half. Morgan would hardly have considered that a trek, five years ago. Fuck, Morgan wouldn’t have considered it a trek one year ago. Now though...

Now, though, Morgan’s leg hurts. It hurts like a motherfucker, but she ignores it and continues to walk, leaning a little more heavily on her cane with every step. Only another mile and a half, and she can rest.

A mile and a half… oh, _God._

Next to her, Close huffs out a sigh, long and loud and dramatic. “It’s _late_ , Freeman, I’m _tired_. Aren’t you tired, too, babe?”

Morgan scowls, her hand gripping the handle of the cane so tightly her knuckles are white, blunt fingernails digging crescent moons into her palm. “ _No_ ,” she says, hoping to God that her leg will last the rest of the way back. That’s the last thing she needs, for her bad leg to just collapse and tumble her onto the cold hard pavement beneath her. Knowing her luck, she’d probably bust up the other leg, too.

“Well, _I’m_ tired,” Close says, a slight whine in his voice. Morgan spares a dubious glance at him, looking no worse for wear, and when did _that_ change happen? Her disaster of a husband, making it through an entire evening as unrumpled and presentable as when he first started it? She’d be much more appreciative of this minor miracle, or, more likely, she would poke and prod and tease him mercilessly until he turned beet red and buried his face in her shoulder, if her leg wasn’t actively trying to murder her.

“This is bullshit! I’m hailing a cab,” Close declares, stepping out onto the street and sticking his arm out, and it’s not long before a taxi pulls up to the curb. Close makes a big show of getting into the cab first, letting out an obscene moan of relief as he slumps against the leather seats, and it’s not until Morgan climbs in after him, Glenn dramatically reaching out to grab at her arm, does she feel the tension she didn’t realize she was carrying with her fall away, and Morgan feels a sense of calm wash over her.

Glenn leans his head on Morgan’s shoulder and sighs again. “Thanks, babe. I know you could’ve made it all the way to the hotel in your sleep, but I was dying out there. It’s been a while since we’ve been in New York - guess I’m not used to these dang city blocks anymore.”

It’s a lie, a dumb, shameless, bald-faced one at that. Morgan smiles, touched in a way she can’t really describe.

Morgan takes his hand and lifts it to her lips to drop a kiss on it. She holds it tight and doesn’t let go. “Of course, magpie. I’ll always be here to help.”

—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no I’m not retconning the shit I wrote I spent valuable time on those, but I have another “Morgan’s not dead” piece I’m sitting on, maybe I might spin it off as like an AU or something if inspiration strikes again


	6. sing us a song tonight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You know, a piano sounds better with the lid open.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I requested a commission of Morgan playing piano while Glenn lounges on top of it and I wrote this like, immediately after I received it, it was so cute and lovely.

\--

“You know, a piano sounds better with the lid  _ open _ ,” Morgan remarks dryly as she watches Glenn immediately climb onto the piano as soon as he’s close enough. He takes off his eyeglasses and rests them on his head, fluttering his eyelashes in some approximation of a “come hither” expression.

“ _ Please _ , Freeman, everyone knows the sexy lady singing on the piano is the  _ real _ star of the show.” He strikes a dramatic pose that Morgan  _ thinks _ is supposed to be seductive but only looks profoundly silly to punctuate his point, and Morgan shakes her head. “Think I can make a career out of this? I can  _ totally _ make a career out of this.”

Morgan furrows her eyebrows and raises a finger to her lips, humming in a thoughtful but exaggerated manner, making a great show of contemplating Glenn’s extremely serious question. “I don’t know, Close. The hot lounge singer’s always wearing a slinky dress with her cleavage out. I’m not sure you can pull it off.”

Glenn gasps, scandalized. He even clutches the jade necklace around his neck like they’re a string of pearls. “Hey! You can’t fool me, you just wanna see my tits! Well, you can't get me that easy -- the answer is, ‘no,’ you old cougar, and that’s that!” Glenn sticks his tongue out at her, a smirk on his lips not a moment later. Morgan bites her lip to hold her laugh in.

“Nothing gets past you, huh?” Morgan sighs in the same dramatic sort of fashion. “Well, no big loss. Not like there’s much there to look at, anyway.” She casually reaches over the music desk to tweak his nipples through his shirt — the aforementioned “tits” as it were — to punctuate  _ her _ point, and Glenn lets out an undignified squeal, tugging at the white strand in her greying hair in retaliation. She  _ does _ laugh this time, and Glenn laughs, too.

“So if you’re going to be hanging out up there, how ‘bout you make yourself useful and sing me a song,” Morgan says, folding down the music desk completely so that she can better look at her husband.

Glenn shuffles around on the piano until he's lying casually on his side, one leg bent slightly under the other. It’s a classic grand, so he’s just short enough that his feet don't hang off the edge and make him look completely ridiculous. " _ Actually _ , since the hot singer is the one who's really drawing in the paying customers, the onus of choosing a song should  _ really _ fall to the person playing the instrument. So why don’t  _ you _ pick a song for me to sing, tall, dark and handsome? You know, since  _ I'm _ the one doing all the actual work." Glenn rests his chin in his hand and smiles triumphantly, like he’s just made some grand revelation and what he just said actually made any sense at all.

Morgan rolls her eyes. "A simple, ‘I don’t know, you choose,’ would’ve been just fine, Close. I would have respected that more than any of that shit just came flying out of your mouth right now." She purses her lips in thought, but it honestly doesn't take much thought at all for the particular song she wants to play to come to mind, and she grins.

It’s a song that’s been on her mind lately, and the notes come smoothly and easily. It's been on Glenn's mind, too, and Morgan raises an eyebrow in amusement at his caught expression. “I’m a light sleeper, Glenn. Our bed is very small for two people  _ and _ a guitar," is all she offers in explanation, and Glenn smiles sheepishly.

"Nothing gets past you, huh," Glenn mumbles, uncharacteristically shy, and Morgan's smirk softens into a fond smile. She waves a hand at Glenn, an invitation and an encouragement, and Glenn joins in easily, the lyrics following and meeting the melody, as effortless and instinctual as breathing.

_ "Wise men say only fools rush in _

_ But I can't help falling in love with you…" _

_ \-- _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then the two of them got kicked out of the music store for being disruptive.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway I'm on tungl.hellsite at whotaughtyougrammar.


End file.
